The Question

 

We're ENGAGED!! It has been 10 wonderful days since our engagement. "We are now one step closer to being our own little two person family." 

This post will be some sort of video explanation of our most wonderful and life changing weekend on Sanibel Island.

My fiancé's favorite place in Florida is Sanibel Island. It is "now our favorite place in Florida."

Warning: This post is overwhelmingly about food.

We got a late start on dinner the first night. We ended up at Island Cow because we'd both been there before a knew it would be good. As usual, we had a wait a while to get our food. It was absolutely worth it though. We started with some insanely good chocolate chip muffins (complimentary) and ended with that massive slice of chocolate cake on the right.

Job well done.

The next morning, July 4th, we took a ferry to Caya Costa State Park (on the left). This is another place my fiancé couldn't be quiet about. Now I know why. Just look at it! We felt like we were in another country. 1. The water was insanely clear and green. 2. There were almost no people on the beach! It was July 4th and there were probably only 3 other boats there when we arrived. 3. We found TONS of really great shells, a sea urchin and sand dollar.

We only stayed for a few hours but we could have stayed all day.

We spent the rest of the day at our hotel beach on Sanibel. We found lots of sea creatures here too! I was previously unaware but now I know that I am with a master sand dollar and sea star excavator. He probably found 50 sea stars and even more sand dollars in our two days on the beach. I love finding things like this so I repeatedly mentioned how "perfect" the day was. It was pretty often. "Today has been the perfect day." That was basically all I said for the rest of the afternoon and at dinner. Little did I know...

We ate dinner at Cip's on Sanibel. I actually chose this place the night before. I was later told that he did not plan to propose after this dinner but changed his mind after our wonderful time at Caya Costa and hearing me repeat endlessly about how perfect the day was.
Regardless, the ring was in his pocket at this dinner!
After eating every last bit of my crab stuffed salmon, he convinced me that we needed to go to the beach before the fireworks. I briefly fought it but gave in pretty quickly after his persuasive argument that we were going to look for baby sea turtles. What?! That doesn't even make sense. It may have been because I was so full.

Things that happened just prior:
*I made a slightly big deal about having to stop and take my shoes off, then put them in the car before we could go on the beach.
*I stabbed my big toe with a shell (because I took my shoes off), which made it bleed.
*I kept talking endlessly about all the sea turtle nests we passed. (This beach was covered in nest!)
We stopped in a spot that had zero people and the sunset right around the corner. He started telling me how much he loves me. He asked if I knew he would love me forever. He told me he was a better man since he had met me. He had been telling me how much he loved me ALL day so it did not occur to me until he started to slide away from me and get down on one knee. I immediately covered my face and something like, "oh my god!" came out. The tears came then as well. He then asked me if I would do him the greatest honor, make him the luckiest man in the world and become his wife. We are a little fuzzy on whether or not he actually said, will you marry me? I obviously said yes through lots of tears. He asked if I "even wanted to see the ring" before putting the ring on my finger. He then said, "You're not my girlfriend anymore- you're my fiancé. This is when the water works really kicked in. A sweet couple, who were celebrating their 46th wedding anniversary, took our picture and we then proceeded to try and find the fireworks while I called family. We spent the rest of the night calling family, friends and enjoying the sound of fiancé.

It was perfectly simple!

We spent our last day on the beach in engagement bliss! 

During what seemed like hurricane winds and rain, we pulled into il Tesoro Bistro for our celebratory dinner. We had not planned to go here but it was literally the only place still open after we watched the U.S. Women win the World Cup.

I ate the best ravioli of my life!

Since we weren't stuffed and feeling bad enough about ourselves, we also had tiramisu for dessert.




Pigs (sausage) in a blanket